Cologne Week 1, Thursday

Today in class we each took turns telling a story about our past and the class had to guess whether it was true or false.  Some of the stories were hilarious.  I shared about how I dressed up as a woman for Halloween a few years ago.  Others had hospital stories, stories about meeting famous people, and various life-endangering adventures.  Some of them true, others not, but it was a ton of fun.  After that we listened to Justin and Corey give a presentation in German about Formula One racing.

After class during the lunch break, I went to the Dom/Hauptbahnhof area to exchange the dollars I had in my pocket for euros at the information center.  The dollars were completely useless here.  After lunch, we went on a city tour of Koeln, where we spent most of it learning about the Altstadt (the old, historic part of the city).  It was all in fast German, so it was often hard to understand the tour guide, especially with all the background noise, but I understood a lot of it and it was all very interesting.  At the end of it, we did a short brewery tour, where we tried Paeffgen, Pfaffen, and Sion beer.  None of them are bottled, but are craft koelsch brews only found in Koeln.  They were all very good, but the Paeffgen was the best of the three.

After the brewery tour, we went back to Lidl to get groceries.  Then I separated from the group to go back to the Dom/Hauptbahnhof area to attempt to find an ATM that would take my debit card from my bank.  No luck.  I have tried every type of ATM here, but none of them will take my card.  It is on the Pulse network, which I had heard is not widely accepted in Europe.  Then I looked it up online and confirmed that not only is it not widely accepted, but it is completely exclusive to the United States.  This was not good news since I have almost reached my monthly credit card limit and I’ve got to pay for a train ticket to Munich next week and a place to stay for next Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night before I can move in to the BMW dorm.  My mom and I are trying to figure out how to get me some money.  It’s frustrating, because I have money in my bank account, but can’t get access to it because my debit card doesn’t work and my credit card has almost reached its limit.  Worrying about money is starting to make it hard to enjoy it here.  But I can't thank my mom enough for how much she has helped me.  I love her and the rest of my family dearly and miss them a lot.

After that, I went to Starbucks to message my mom and happened to catch Janie on video chat again!  After that I went back to the Jugendherberge to eat, finish homework, and hang out a little before going to bed.

Cologne Week 1, Wednesday

Today in class we learned about prepositions and more about food and drink.  We had a food and drink quiz that turned into a competition.  There were four teams and we would get points if we answered a question correctly.  Well, our team got no points and the others had 3, 3, and 4 points each.  Everyone was laughing because we couldn’t for the life of us answer a question right.  So we sang a German song in front of the class and got 5 points for it, so we ended up winning!  Haha it was very funny.  One thing that I found very interesting was this chart:

Average amount per year a German drinks
160 Liter	Coffee
131 Liter	Beer
101 Liter	Water
92 Liter	Erfrischungsgetraenke
78 Liter	Milk
41 Liter	Juice
25 Liter	Tea
18 Liter	Wine

Then we listened to Bridget Gibson (Civil Eng., Deutsche Bahn, Karlsruhe) and Claire Koenig present in German about basketball, the origins and the evolution of the sport to today.  After that we had a lunch break where I stayed in the CDC to use the internet and eat the orange that I bought at Aldi. 

After lunch, we had a guest speaker from Factory International Training and GIZ, who is a native German from Koeln, come in to teach us about German culture, how it’s different from American culture, how Germans became how they are, how Germans view Americans, how to open up and build relationships with Germans, and what to do and say in various situations we will encounter in the workplace. 

Some differences we as a class have seen from Cologne and Cincinnati so far:

1.       Nothing is free – bathrooms, grocery bags, wifi, water all come with a price

2.       No queuing – if you’re not paying attention, people will cut in front of you in line.  You have to be facing forward and directly behind the person in front of you.

3.       Rare credit card acceptance – most of the time shops will not accept credit cards, and if they do, it usually has to be an EC card, which is the European form of a debit card from your bank.  This has been very frustrating because we have to make frequent stops at ATM’s and we get charged for it every time.  The good thing is, carrying around tons of money on you isn’t so bad as Cincinnati because…….

4.      It’s safer – there are no “bad parts” in Cologne.  There are lower income areas in other cities in Germany that are probably not ideal to walk through at night, but even then, you are much much safer than in Clifton.  The only thing to watch out for is pickpocketers.  It’s not quite as bad in Germany as it is in Italy, Spain, and England, but it could happen if you’re not careful.  The key is to keep your wallet in your front pocket and in crowds, make sure you swing your backpack to your front side so that nobody reaches in it.  Especially if you are going to fall asleep on a train, you need to make sure you’re holding onto it.  If you’re really worried about it, you can also get a second wallet and put a few euros in it and keep that one in your pocket and then sling your first wallet under your shirt around your torso with the rest of your money in it.  This way, if you get mugged, you can give them the wallet that has a few euros in it and you will hopefully get away with your real wallet.  This would be really useful in Clifton actually.

5.       Better waste management – loads of recycling containers around the city.  You get reimbursed for bottles at the hostel.  Pretty much every room has automatic lights that turn off when it senses no movement.  A lot of the electricity in the city is run by solar panels.

6.      Better public transportation – very efficient, very timely, plenty of stops to get you within a short walk anywhere you want to go in the city.  Many more people bike here and there are bike lanes between the sidewalk and the street.  I almost got hit several times before I figured that out haha.   The infrastructure here in general is much more efficient and ecofriendly.

7.      Cleaner – it is much cleaner here than any city I’ve been to in the United States.  And apparently Cologne is dirty compared to most of the other big cities in Germany.

8.       Politeness – Germans are surprisingly polite and helpful, contrary to the stereotype.  If you ask for help, they will get excited and go the extra mile to help you.  But…….

9.       Service is terrible – German waiters and waitresses are not there to sweet talk you.  They will often be rude to customers.  There’s a common saying that Germany is a “service desert”.

10.   Pornography is everywhere – in every shop that sells magazines, there is a dirty section that doesn’t hide anything with stickers or packaging.  Same with at Saturn, which is the German version of Best Buy.  I was walking around in the movie section and then on the wall from a distance I saw a huge pornography section.  In the U.S. nudity is taboo, but here in Germany, it is in plain sight for kids to see. 

After the guest speaker, five of us walked to Neumarkt to go to Fassbender’s Bakery again, but they were closing so we decided to go to Lidl, pronounced “LEETEL”, which is a large grocery store competitor to Aldi.  There we bought bread, which you can put into a machine that will cut it for you in slices thick as you choose, and meat and cheese for sandwiches.  Some people also bought bottles of wine for between 0.99 euro – 2 euro, but I was completely out of cash.  Alcohol is extremely cheap at the grocery stores here.   We took our groceries back and made sandwiches with apples for dinner, which was a great idea since it split up to about 2 euros per person.  After that, we did our homework together and then finished off the night playing Egyptian Rat Screws.  It was a fun end to the night.

Cologne Week 1, Tuesday

Today we had breakfast in the morning before going to class.  It is included with our room in the hostel and I forgot to mention that yesterday.  Breakfast is different here in Germany.  You won’t find scrambled eggs, bacon, waffles, and pancakes.  They typically eat a very light breakfast made up of bread with some slices of meat and cheese or cereal with some coffee or juice.  Most Germans have their biggest meal of the day during lunch, where they will have multiple courses including an entrée, salad, dessert, etc.  and dinner is usually something smaller like fruit or sandwiches.

Anyway, after breakfast we went to the language center (CDC) and began class by reviewing some grammar and then listening to him talk in German about climbing Mount Everest.  In sounds random, and it is, but just listening in German helps you learn, no matter the topic.  It seemed like something he knew a lot about, and it was interesting to learn about the geography , the methods, and the dangers involved.  Then we talked about German food and drink.  He gave us some recommendations on beer and bakeries in Cologne.  He told us that Reissdorf, Paeffgen, and Gaffel are great koelsch beers, but the absolute best in Cologne is Muehlen Koelsch from Brauerei zur Malzmuehle.  He also told us that the best bakery in Cologne is Fassbender on Mittelstrasse.  Apparently Fassbender is one of the best bakeries in Europe and they cater many parties for kings and royalty in Europe.  After that, we listened to a presentation by Corey Knapke and Nathan Wukie on jazz music in Germany.  After class ended around noon, we had a free afternoon.

The first thing we did was head over to Fassbender bakery to have lunch.  Along the way walking there we saw an Astin Martin DB9, and there was a crowd around it taking pictures.  Later, we also saw an Audi R8 drive past but didn’t get a picture of it.  I forgot to mention it, but yesterday we also saw two Masserati’s.  The cars here are amazing.  We see Posches all the time and Audis, Mercedes, BMWs and Peugeots are everywhere.

In Fassbender, there were the most delicious deserts you can imagine.  For lunch I got a sandwich with ciabatta bread, basil, parmesan, tomato, spinach, and meat and a café macchiato.  It was super good.  I wanted to go back for some desert, but didn’t get a chance to because once we started walking around into some shops, we wandered too far away.

Some people in our group wanted to buy some water bottles, so we went into a huge mall that had a gigantic store called Joseph Wolfskins, which sold all kinds of outdoor gear.  Here there were three stories and it was open in the center with a huge pool at the bottom where you could test the rafts, kayaks, and canoes.  I wish we had that kind of thing in the US.

After that we decided to head over to the Malzmuehle brewery to try their beer.  When we first got in there, we asked to have a table and the waiter joked with us saying they had none, when clearly there was an entire room of tables empty.  It took a second to realize he was only joking, because we forgot that in Germany they don’t typically have hosts and hostesses to seat you.  You normally find whatever empty seat you want to sit at.  We each ordered beer at the brewery, which was very good and then some of us bought bottles to go.  It was super cheap, 0.88 euros per half liter bottle.  After that, we walked along the Rhein river until we reached the Koeln Dom. 

Every time we got near the cathedral, we couldn’t believe how big it is.  We went inside and climbed a spiral staircase to the top of one of the steeples.  We saw 5 gigantic bells inside and once we got outside to the balcony, the view was breath-taking.  We could see all of Koeln from above, and we realized how big the city is.  After that, we descended the staircase and went in the cathedral entryway.  The inside is gigantic and magnificent.  The ceiling is very high and the thick pillars lead up to the flying buttresses.  The stained glass is incredible and the detailed art and architecture inside is amazing.  There was also the biggest organ I’ve ever seen extending up to the ceiling.

After that we looked for a place to have dinner.  We found the Frueh brewhouse off of Hochstrasse and most people ate there, but I decided not to because I wasn’t very hungry.  So I went to the Starbucks across the street and had a short skype video chat with my beautiful girlfriend Janie.  It was so refreshing to see her face again.  I miss her so much.  After they were done eating, they found me in Starbucks and we went to Gelato’s and this time I was able to try the mint chocolate chip and it was DELICIOUS!  After that we rode the train back to the hostel and worked on our homework together as a big group.  Then I heard that the hostel was providing free wifi tonight, so I went down to the lounge to take advantage of that.  It’s normally 1.50 euro per hour, which is very inconvenient.  Free wifi is very rare here, and Starbucks is the only place I know of that does it, but even then it’s only a 2 hour trial period.  One trend I’ve noticed is that many of the things we take for granted as free in the United States, you have to pay for here in Germany.  For example, bathrooms, grocery bags, internet.

While I was soaking up the free internet, Janie got on randomly and we were able to video chat again.  Twice in one day!  Time for bed.  Goodnight.

Cologne Week 1, Monday

Today we had our first class at the Carl Duisberg Center (CDC).  Two ladies from giz met us in the lobby and led us to the train station where they gave us group tickets to the CDC.  When we got there, our professor, Herr Doktor Mainka, greeted us at the door and told us to meet him in a classroom on the second floor.  We had heard great things about Doktor Mainka, especially about his polka dot bowties.  He entered the classroom filled with energy and making us all laugh.  He is very flamboyant, has a fun personality, and entertains us with a great sense of humor.  This made the day go by fast because the class was actually pretty fun.  First we reviewed some grammar.  Sounds boring, but somehow he manages to make it interesting.  Then we talked about the theme sports and got into groups and invented our own sports.  We then presented our sport to the class, which was a lot of fun and filled with laughter.  After class ended around noon, we had a lunch break, where Joe Heekin (Elec. Eng., Pilz, Stuttgart), Julie Hess, Elizabeth Thesing (Chem. Eng., Forschung Zentrum Jeuling, Jeuling), and Michael Downing (Aero. Eng., Siemens, Muehlheim) and I walked down the street and found a street vender selling sausages and fries.  I got a currywurst on bread with ketchup and mustard and a Gilden Koelsch beer.  Unlike in the U.S., you can drink in public in Germany.  So after we finished eating, I drank my beer while walking down the street and finished it inside the learning center.  Here, one of the ladies from giz took us to the Deutsche Bahn at the Hauptbahnhof and we bought S-bahn passes on the 1-b network that gave us unlimited travel within the city for the whole week.  This will be nice to have so that we can go out and explore the city after class.

After that, we took the train to an electronics store called Saturn, which is the German equivalent of Best Buy.  We bought our unlocked phones and some people bought T-Mobil prepaid SIM cards.  We then went to Aldi grocery store, where I and many others bought our prepaid SIM cards.  It offered the cheapest rate at 3 cents per minute and 11 cents for other providers and 13 cents per minute international.  I’m only worried about how many people actually use Aldi’s service.  Otherwise I’m going to spend 11 cents a minute most of the time, which is relatively expensive compared to the T-Mobile, O₂, and Vodafone networks.  I also bought some apples and oranges as snacks for the week.  Another big difference in Germany is that they don’t give you bags for your groceries or any of your purchases.  Here you have to buy your plastic bags.  I think they cost 0.50 euros per bag, which can add up if you are buying a lot of things.  This reminds me, another difference is that you also have to pay for most public restrooms.  Usually it costs around 0.50 euros.  Or you can do what I did and go to Starbucks, where you are supposed to type in a passcode to get into the bathroom (not sure how to get the code yet), and just wait for someone to come out and grab the door before it closes.  Sometimes you have to get strategic. 

Then we came back to the hostel and tried to figure out how to register our SIM cards.  We sat together in the lounge and worked through the online registration in German and we eventually got all of our phones working and exchanged each other’s numbers.  Then we went out to the inner city to get some dinner.  I ate an orange along the way and wasn’t so hungry, but we walked around Hoch Strasse again and found a pizza place everyone wanted to go to.  I wasn’t very hungry, so I went with Elizabeth Thesing and Claire Koenig (Mech. Eng., Deutsche Bahn, Karlsruhe) to Gelato’s, a well-known Italian ice cream shop that had absolut lecker (absolutely delicious) ice cream.  The best part is that it’s super cheap!  Who would have thought that of all things ice cream would be cheap in a city so expensive!  It’s 1 euro per scoop, and the key is to get one scoop at a time so that you get a new cone each time.  I got one scoop of the raspberry yogurt and then went back and got another scoop of the plain raspberry.  I hope next time to try their mint chocolate chip, which is my favorite.  Then we came back and worked on homework for a little bit, and now I’m writing this before I go to bed.

Journey to Germany

On Saturday at 9:30AM I arrived at Dayton International Airport.  My parents drove me there and along the way I was already beginning to miss them.  I was also nervous about going through the check-in and security check process because I hadn’t flown since the summer before my senior year of high school when I went to California.  I was afraid of messing up or not following directions correctly and looking embarrassed or getting yelled at.  Surprisingly it was a very easy process.  First I went to the check-in where they took my driver’s license and weighed my bag.  Then they gave me my boarding ticket for the flight I booked online and also a “Heavy” sticker with a $60 fine for my bag weighing more than 50 pounds.  It weighed 64 pounds because of all the books I brought.  Then  I took my bag to the checked baggage scanner, watched that go though, then went to the TSA security checkpoint with my personal item (backpack).  I wanted my parents to watch me go through before leaving and I hugged them goodbye, holding back tears.  Next, I approached the security checkpoint and I had to take my shoes, my belt, and my coat off and empty everything out of my pockets and take my laptop out of my backpack.  I slid that through the scanner and then stood in a large scanner that looked like a pod and had a revolving sensor that circled my body.  Then I went through, picked up my stuff, and grabbed a sausage, egg, and cheese biscuit from a café before heading to gate C17.  My flight wasn’t scheduled to leave until 12:45, so I had about 3 hours to wait. 

On the way to the gate, I ran into Nathan Wukie, who is an aerospace engineer on the same trip who will be working for Numeka in Nuernberg.  We chatted until around 11, when I went over to my gate to board the plane.  When I got over there, I waited for a little while until Julie Hess, a chemical engineer working in the ICP program working for Bosch in Stuttgart, arrived.  She booked the same ticket as me and sat across the aisle from me on our first flight from Dayton to Dallas/Fort Worth with American Airlines.  That flight lasted 2 hours 40 minutes, and then we went to gate D36 to fly from Dallas/Fort Worth to Frankfurt, Germany with Iberia, a Spanish airline owned by American Airlines.  When we got to the gate, we got our first taste of Germany because many people were speaking German and the announcements came in both English and German.  At this gate, I exchanged 610 dollars for 360 euros which was a terribly high exchange rate.  I got the money placed on a Travelex Pre-paid Currency Card so that I wouldn’t have to carry around the cash.  I was then able to later take this money out at an ATM.  We boarded the flight, which was a Boeing 777 packed completely full of people.  This flight lasted 9 hours 40 minutes and to pass the time, I watched 2 movies, Chronicles of Narnia: The Dawn Treader, and The Kings Speech (which was excellent by the way), along with some sleeping and reading my Germany Lonely Planet guide in between. 

When we got to Frankfurt, it was 7AM in Germany time and we saw all the signs in German and heard everyone speaking in German.  We followed signs for the Gepaeckausgabe which means baggage claim.  We waited in a huge line until a woman worker came up and yelled at everyone in very fast German to go upstairs to an alternate entrance.  She looked really annoyed by all of us because many of us were Americans and couldn’t understand what she said.  Anyway, we got to the Gepaeckausgabe and gave the police officer our passports.  He looked at them, stamped them with a visitor’s visa, and waved us on.  Then we grabbed our bags which were there waiting for us.  The next room we came into was a big green room for customs.  There was a door that said “Nothing to claim” in English, so we walked right on through that one.  I was nervous about going through customs, since I’ve never been out of the country and hadn’t done that before.  But that was it, we just walked through that door.

 Next we followed signs to the basement of the airport (Flughafen) to reach the Frankfurt Flughafen Bahnhof (train station).  There, Julie and I met up with Justin Speer (Mech. Eng., Siemens, Passau), Corey Vinton (Mech. Eng., Leoni), Ben Zeigler (Mech Eng., Leoni), Corey Knapke (Mech. Eng., BMW with me!, Muenchen), Nathan Wukie (Aero. Eng., Numeka, Nuernberg), and Evan Sneath (Elec. Eng., Deutsch Luft-und-Raumfahrtechnik (DLR), Bremen).  There we attempted to use the automatic ticket machine to buy a group ticket, which we did, but we weren’t sure if it was right because all it had on it was numbers.  So we took the train from Frankfurt to Mainz and when we got to Mainz, we went into the Deutsche Bahn train station and sure enough we had the wrong ticket.  The good thing was that nobody checked our tickets.  So then we got two correct group tickets and took the train to Koblenz and had to change trains to get to Koeln.  One of the trains we were on had a hydraulic door for the restroom that looked and sounded just like one of the doors on the Millenium Falcon from Star Wars.  We took the regional trains, which were the slowest, but scenic trains.  This was well worth it because we traveled along the Rhine River the entire way.  There were vineyards spread all across the valley and we saw small towns along the river with castles perched on the hills.  It was amazing. 

Then once we got to Koeln, we took the S-bahn (city trains) to the Jugendherberge (hostel) where we are staying for the next two weeks.  We checked into the hostel and got settled into our rooms and then took the train downtown to eat lunch and see the city.  As soon as we walked out of the Hauptbahnhof (central train station) the Koeln Dom (Cologne Cathedral) towered over us.  It is monstrous and intimidating.  We walked past some street artists who painted on the sidewalks which were really cool.  Then we walked down Hoch Strasse (High street), which is the major shopping strip.  There were many American stores there plus 2 Dunkin Donuts and 2 McDonalds.  They’re impossible to escape!  After walking around for a while, we ate at a place called “Bratwurst”, can you guess what they served?  I had a brat on a bun with some ketchup and mustard and a Reissdorf Koelsch, which is the most popular koelsch beer (a style of beer made only in Cologne) and we sat outside café style watching people. 

After that we went back to the hostel and Corey, Ben, Nathan, and I tossed a frisbee outside for awhile.  After that, I went to the front desk to ask for directions to the nearest Geldautomat (ATM maschine) but the woman at the counter could not give good directions.  I went out 3 times to find it and couldn’t, so I asked her to draw it and then I went out one more time and finally found it.  I took about 100 euros out because here in Germany, they don’t accept credit cards very often.  Almost everything has to be paid in cash.  I’ve heard that that is changing though.  Anyway, I went back to the hostel and paid for internet (1.50 euro per hour) so that I could check my credit card balance and send some emails back home letting everyone know I was ok.  Only about 2 people from our group of 13 had cell phones that were working, so I made sure to email home as soon as possible because I knew my dad would be worrying about me.  My mom later that night called AT&T and got international calling enabled on my phone for 26 cents a minute.  Then I got to talk with my girlfriend Janie on gmail chat and video chat for a few minutes.  I was so happy to see her face again, even though it had only been two days.  Then I went to bed after that because I was completely exhausted from jet lag (5 hour time difference this week, because of daylight savings, but normally 6 hours).